"A clue, however, was obtained by one of the solicitor's men who made a tour of the near-by cab yards. He elicited the fact that a vehicle had been hastily ordered from one of them on the previous evening, and that the cabman had driven an elderly lady and gentleman to Bushey station. His fares seemed to him to be in a very disturbed state of mind, the gentleman especially so. The cabman thought that they were man and wife because he swore so.
"This couple leaving so hurriedly on the evening on which Mr. Kyser's death was reported in the Post is, to say the least of it, suspicious, and they have been traced to some extent. They took first-class tickets for Euston, travelling by the 9.49 train. In London all trace was lost of them, but a porter states that they were seen again early the next morning entering the 7.10 for Birmingham. Here the scent is lost for the present, though from the minute descriptions furnished by the different railway officials and the cabman of Bushey, the suspected man bears a great resemblance to a well-known manufacturer in the Midlands. It seems, however, absurd to identify this prosperous and much-respected man with Mr. Kyser and his affairs.
"Another matter which causes some speculation is the fact that the caretaker of Messrs. Kyser, Schultz & Company's offices asserts that he saw his master in company with a clerk who had that day been dismissed, enter a grill-room in Gracechurch Street. The two representatives of the firm after leaving Bushey called at this clerk's address in Clapham, only to find that this house, too, had evidently been hastily vacated in much the same manner as Adderbury Cottage.
"There, for the present, the mystery rests. The police, who have been communicated with, are, in the mean time, doing their utmost to trace the elderly gentleman and lady who took the train to Birmingham."
Mr. Povey put down the paper and whistled softly to himself. Then as he thought of poor Uncle Jasper and Aunt Eliza, the mirthful side of the affair took him and he laughed for ten minutes.
He rang the bell and told the waiter that he thought he would take a Scotch whisky and a small Apollinaris.
CHAPTER VII
TREMOOR
The morning of November the fifteenth dawned full of promise. For three days previously the toe of Cornwall had been victimized by sea-mists, accompanied by a lashing rain from the south-west, and the time had hung heavily upon the hands of Mr. Povey. He appreciated now to the full how he had cut himself adrift from his whole past, and the knowledge that even his address was known to no living soul gave him a curious and chilling sense of isolation.